Published on
Updated
Reading 2 mins.
In the office, at the gym and even in train stations… It is no longer rare to see people pedaling frantically to charge their electronic devices. Indeed, it is possible to transform the energy provided by the human body into electricity. Focus on this unusual method.
A device tested in stations for several years
The scene is now familiar: you cross the hall of a train station and you see several travelers waiting for their train seated around a circular table, most often their eyes riveted on their smartphones. But they are far from being passive: if you pay attention to the structure of the seat on which they sit, you will indeed find that they are equipped with pedals. However, these “bicycle chairs” fulfill a very specific function: pedaling makes it possible to generate electricity, transmitted to the socket to which you just have to plug the charger of your phone or computer.
The devices have been tested in France for several years now and deployed in around ten stations in the country. But the offer has a price: to charge half of your phone, you will have to pedal around 30 minutes! Useful if you need an extra charge before your trip, but quickly exhausting if your battery is completely flat.
Combine sport and work
It’s not just in the halls that you find these bikes of a new kind. Electricity-generating pedalboards are also arriving in offices. Some companies offer their employees the opportunity to work on pedal desks. Here again, the principle is the same: pedaling with the strength of the legs to recharge your devices. A godsend in this current context where energy sobriety is more than necessary.
This trend is also well established: more and more employees want to combine sport and work. Many offices have also opted for a long time (like some schools) for classic office bikes, that is to say that do not generate electricity.
Generate electricity by walking or dancing
The concept can also be applied to sports halls. This is also the niche in which Fabrice Vernay, founder of the start-up, has positioned himself. Wattsgood. As for people who are more connected to teleworking, it will be a little more difficult to invest in an exercise bike that produces electricity. In France, this market remains underdeveloped for individuals. However, some initiatives have recently emerged, such as Vel’ectrik, a small exercise bike that works on the same principle as a wind turbine and which was the subject of a crowdfunding campaign on the Ulule platform at the end of 2021.
Do-it-yourselfers can also install their own system and link their electronics to a bike via (among other things) a battery, based on the same technique used for dynamo lights. This is, for example, what the students of the electricity baccalaureate section of the Lycée Condorcet, located in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (94), did by creating a “bike-generator” from scratch.
The action of pedaling is not the only effort provided by the human body that scientists exploit to transform them into a source of energy. Some researchers are working on the production of electricity produced thanks to the kinetic energy of the steps taken when we walk on the sidewalk or even in our apartment! A Scottish nightclub even had the idea of recovering and reusing the heat given off by clubbers on the dancefloor to transport them to drilling wells!